


Of Ingwë Ingweron

by heget



Series: Vanyar [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: "the fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric’", Cuiviénen fic, Family, Fun with Archaeology and Anthropology, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Ingwë Finwë and Elwë are not related to Imin Tata and Enel, Klingon Promotion Vanyar, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prehistoric Elves, String Theory joke, Valar as Paleolithic Monsters, Vanyar aren't Boring, Violence, everything is Tilion's fault, societal ostracism of the disabled
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1367419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heget/pseuds/heget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of the history of the Elves at Cuiviénen and the development of the the three tribes, of the family of Elwë and the discovery of Oromë, of how Indis received her name and Ingwë earned his, and of the honor duel between Imin and Ingwë to decide the leadership of the Minyar and the future of the Eldar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of the Hunters of the First Tribe

**Author's Note:**

> Some names and terms are in Primitive Elvish, but should be self-explanatory. I am using elements of the _Cuivienyarna_ from the appendix of HoMe XI -plus other parts of HoMe- and the history of the Awakening of the Elves as presented in the _Silm_ , with the one glaring difference - logically it makes more sense to me that the first three elves to awaken and lead the tribes are **not** the same three elves that go with Oromë. The Ingwë and Vanyar here are based off ideas outlined in this post - [Klingon Promotions Among the Vanyar](http://squirrelwrangler.tumblr.com/post/53925168294/klingon-promotions-among-the-vanyar).  
>  Though the focus is mostly Ingwë and his sister Indis, the story covers early life for everyone at Cuiviénen, especially Elu Thingol and his brothers, thus tagged for multiple series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised as of 8/23/15

The first tribe of Speakers, Kwendî, were never large in number, and their choices would keep their tribe small. In this time all elves lived near the shores of the Great Mother Lake which had birthed them, Cuiviénen, and there did most remain. Yet some chose to venture away, for in that time all elves were curious. But curiosity and hunger drew the people of the first tribe away from the safety of the lake more than all other elves and thus sealed their fate.

The first tribe was the Minyar, led by the First to awaken of all the Speakers, and Imin regretted that his people were never as many as those of other tribes. Tata was the leader of the second tribe, from which they were known as the Tatyar, and their numbers were great enough that more than one village needed to hold their numbers. Of the third tribe Enel was their chief, though so many were the third tribe that added together the first and second could not equal. The Nelyar thus had many villages spread across the shores of the Great Mother Lake. The Tatyar people with flat dark hair and pale skin delighted in all curiosities and new knowledge, and the third tribe found the sounds of water sweetest and thus clamored around the shore and paddled into the lake itself.

But the people of bronze and golden skin, with hair that shone light and golden when the great camp fires were lit, they were fearless. They were first to see the meat of animal kills and use the gift of voice to shout and frighten the scavengers away. They were first to decide to emulate hunters like the great cats and the wolves, to leave the echoing water and run through the fir forest and dark plains in search of prey. With the clear voices and the use of song the Minyar Kwendî called out the plans. With newly invented words they called the ideas of running ahead, of circling the prey and herding it, and of throwing from many hands as if one.

No other creature looked like them, walked on two feet and had hands that could grasp and throw and make. On the first hunt it was rocks to scatter the animals, like they had done to the other scavengers to claim old kills, and sharpened spears from branches and young saplings around their home. A Tatyar would find a way to lash the knapped stone scrapers the Kwendî were beginning to use as knives to make a sharper spear-point atop the wooden javelin. On the second hunt this spear would prove superior. The Minyar would learn to make these stone knives, but most traded with the Tatyar instead. The second tribe had not the skills of body strength, the understanding of animals both prey and predator, the songs and strategies of how to successfully hunt the best game. Better the Tatyar craftsmen spend their time on the spearheads and knives, for their hands were skilled to it and familiar, and the Minyar to the long hunts. Thus no time was wasted, and true talents matched of crafter and hunter. This was said to be the wisdom of the customs of the Speakers, the Kwendî, and none questioned it.

The Nelyar fished. In truth they accomplished more than that, for their careful tending of the water reeds and plants growing on the narrow rich land between shore and the surrounding woods was the beginning of agriculture. The Nelyar would tend the reeds to make woven goods like clothing and baskets and later the walls of their houses. Tubers and edible greens they also farmed, beginning to control the environment instead of the other way around.

The Minyar grew strong on the rich red meat of prey, drinking the thick blood and sucking the bone marrow. They would offer pieces of heart and liver and lung to the Tatyar craftsmen who gave them the spearheads. Not just stone, but tools and art of many materials became the province of the second tribe. Clay from the lakeshore baked in fire pits became hard enough for bricks and pots, and skilled hands learned to make many shapes and patterns. Once enough deer were killed and antlers gathered, bone weapons became common. Even the Tatyar children would expend their curiosity by hunting through the woods after rutting season, looking for discarded antlers to make into new tools and ornaments. Thus the character of the Noldor, of what the second tribe would value most, was given its foundations.

But to leave the sight and hearing range of Cuiviénen, to run after the great deer and horse and boar, was dangerous. Not only was such big game dangerous to the hunters, where a kick or tusk of an animal even fatally captured could injury an unwary Minyar tracker, but the Kwendî were not the only hunters on the plains. Great beasts, monsters of horn and ivory dying the earth with blood[1], also competed with the Minyar for prey, or saw these Kwendî as food. Hunters, both male and female for in those days and indeed forever after for the first tribe saw no difference of gender in the skill of a runner to defeat the swift deer or an arm that could hurl a spear, were lost to the violence, and thus the first tribe was never able to grow in number like their kin who did not venture into danger.

And the best illustration of this is the story of the mother and father of those we would later name Ingwë and his sister Indis.

* * *

 

The father of he who would be called Ingwë Ingweron was a hunter of the Minyar, one of the first pairs awaken but not among the first found by Imin. He was especially regarded among his tribe for swiftness of foot. His was the untiring energy to run after swift prey like the small deer and lined-backed dun horses. His first name had been to liken this speed to that of the wind, though there was a time this name of the father of Ingwë Ingweron was not spoken. When Indis was born her brother told her the true name of their father, Alakô the rushing wind. That she must hold the name in her heart, let not the other tales displace it.

She that woke at the side of swift-footed Alakô was his wife and a hunter likewise skilled, whose arms with spear or spear-thrower had no equal. She was called by the strength of her shoulders and lovely arms. Among the first people of her tribe it was said that one always knew who cast the spear that flew the farthest and truest, for it would be hers. Maktâmê, by those arms skilled in wielding weapons she would be named.

Fates are cruel.

Around the great lake called Cuiviénen for a span of much constant walking was forest with trees dark and tall. But to persevere would take a hunting party through the tangle of giant firs, primitive pines, and swaying ferns to open plains dotted periodically by single slender trees. Here the horses and many species of deer, elk, and bison grazed and ran. Here were the packs of wolves and hyena, the lion prides, and other predators which hunted such beasts. Here the Minyar crouched in the long grasses, watching carefully and learning the tricks of hunting beasts, of how they could run down the deer, horses, and bison. The boy that would become Ingwë Ingweron was too young to join such a hunt. He was left in the village to wait the sunless days for his tribe to return from these ventures. When the time for the hunting came, the boy that would become Ingwë helped his mother gather the spears and spear-throwers. To the shores of the lake he filled the waterskins, and from the storing mats he selected large pieces of jerky to sustain the hunters on their journey. Solemnly he painted the lines of camouflage and ritual paint across his father’s body and face, frowning as his father laughed from the sensation. His father and mother each drew a line around the boy’s jaw and over his beating heart, telling the boy that when he grew taller and stronger he would be permitted to join a hunt, but not this one. The boy wiped at the paint and reminded them to check the lashings of their spears. No fear was in his heart, only pride and eagerness. His parents were great hunters, would be the first to bring down a deer or elk, and his stomach rumbled at the anticipation of such delicious meat.

It was not to be.

Swift-foot Alakô ran, two members of his tribe including his wife Maktâmê trailing behind him, as they harried the young buck they had singled out from the herd. One spear cast from him, the others from his helpers, all the while laughing and singing, for their skill in felling prey had grown mighty indeed. They thought themselves masters of these plains. The deer crashed to the earth bleeding and exhausted, spears hanging from its flanks like swaying saplings sprouting from the earth. But the hunters had grown too arrogant, too incautious in the darkness of those early days. The man knelt beside the fallen prey, all his attention on the knife in his hand and ending the struggling cries of the dying animal. The thick stinking blood spurted over himself and the earth as he ran the blade across the throat. His back was turned. He did not see the beast that came attracted by the smell of blood and dying noises. A solitary hunter, something much like a leopard, leapt down from the trees that stood like islands among the sea of grass and attacked Alakô. A creature made mad and full of bloodlust from Melkor's taint savaged the elf and dying animal both. The man screamed as his flesh was rent, muscles of his leg opened to the bones, claws that raked across his face permanently removing an eye, and arms and hands also badly injured. All the while he screamed.

The hunters drew back in fear, all but the woman Maktâmê. She rushed forward with spear in hand, trying to drive the beast away from the mangled thing that was now her husband, attempting to save him. She was able to force the beast off, but not before sharp fang and tooth scored debilitating wounds to her arms, those strong and famous arms desperately trying to pry the man away.

But the bodies of the elves healed swiftly from even most horrific injuries, spirits fending off diseases and agents of rot, clinging to bodies even when hope was slim. [2]

The man once named Alakô survived this attack, and also his wife, though her arms no longer proved useful for hunting, and one would hang uselessly from her side. Maktâmê of the arms, they would still call her, but arms that brought her fear instead of envy, Skarnâ-Maktê. The hunting party returned with no meat, carrying only the bodies of these two Kwendî which had once be the pride of their membership. The boy who would become Ingwë watched his parents brought home, the blackness of despair finding lodging and lordship in his heart. As the few rudimentary healers of the Kwendî, equipped with their early ignorance, worked to close the gaping dreadful wounds, all found it a surprise that the man who once ran so swiftly even survived. But this greatness of strength was not praised, for from that point on he was severely crippled, a figure of fear and scorn, only able to hobble around the camps of the Minyar half-blind. Thus he was seen as useless to his tribe. In those early days the Minyar valued strength and effectiveness towards their continued survival as a people, and the man could no longer offer any. The boy who would be Ingwë watched as his once laughing and talkative father grew cold and silent. He had once thought his father too silly, too often smiling when there did not seem a reason to be. Even before the accident, the boy that would grow to be Ingwë Ingweron had been a solemn and serious child, wishing to make things with a gravitas that brought his father to tears of laughter. The now lonely boy regretted the negative thoughts he once had about his father’s smiles. No more smiles would come easily to this family.

Mocking names the injured man was rechristened by the tribe, names of worthlessness and scorn and fright for the dreadfulness of his appearance, the frailty he had become. Skarwô and Ulgundô and Khyannô and Nukottô were the names the man was called. Never would the man acknowledge these names, nor his wife or son, but they could not unhear them.

The boy's mother grew bitter from her days spent tending his broken father, unable to hurl the spears, the lacework of puckered silver scars making a mockery of beauty she was named for. Her bitterness fed also on the scorn upon her and her husband. And the boy himself grew grim and quiet.

A figure of ill-omen to his tribe, the child of weaklings he was called by the Minyar and their proud chieftain, as if the earlier strength of his parents was forgotten. Sullen, they called the boy, for he was. The tribe renamed him the unspeaking one, Ûkwendô. By this act they highlighted the powerlessness of his standing among his people, denied him his personhood among the Kwendî. Little was expected of him, only that he would remain a dead weight among his tribe much as his mother and father were.

This child of Alakô and Maktâmê had been the eighth born to the small tribe of the Minyar, an auspicious number. Once he had been the welcome child, the lucky one, a child with greatness expected. He that would be Ingwë Ingweron did not forget this.

After he had been born, Maktâmê shared nursing duties with another hunter who gave birth a few months before her, freeing both women to join the hunting parties as they alternated duties. This fellow hunter's son was Asmalô, seventh born of the Minyar, and he grew to be a typical hunter, of gregarious smile but swift to snark at those that annoyed him. This other woman and her son had once been as a brother and second mother to the boy that would be Ingwë. Asmalô was his first friend, but this broken bond was overshadowed by later and more portentous friendships. While they that had been named Alakô and Maktâmê recovered from their horrific injuries, Asmalô’s mother had been the one to clean their wounds and force food into their son’s hands. Afterwards, when it was clear the limit of recovery, Asmalô and his mother shunned the friends they had once so highly praised, speaking the same harsh and cruel names. To his once friend and companion Asmalô spoke the name Ûkwendô, and so the two no longer played together or shared meals, until the discovery that changed all.

Before, he that would be Ingwë wanted to be a hunter along side his friend and eventually marry another Minyar hunter, as that was expected custom. His favorite part of the hunts had been the painting of hunters before they left, the ceremony complete with speeches from Imin Ingweron. Now he avoided the ceremonies that sent the Minyar hunting parties away. He did not join Asmalô for the boy’s first hunt, run by his side and hurl spears, or stand beside him to hear the chieftain speak and accept paint and blessings. Before the accident, the boy liked to pretend to be the chieftain, sticking stray feathers in his hair and making proclamations to his fellow toddlers. They would all giggle, and their mothers would pick them up and tickle them, Maktâmê kissing her son’s cheek and pulling out the feathers with her teeth. Imin and Iminyë would watch with bemused patronizing fondness, and she now called Skarnâ-Maktê recalled with pride how her chieftain once praised her son’s powerful voice. “You are made for greatness, my son,” she told the boy that would be Ingwë, and she never stopped telling him this, even in the blackest despair of their lives.

Now a pariah, the boy that would become Ingwë, the boy that others called Ûkwendô, learned he must fend for himself, hunt and forage for food, discover how to go to the camps of the Tatyar and barter for goods on his own. He could not depend on his parents or the charity of the other Minyar, not even the boy he once called brother. Nor would his pride allow it. He could not allow fear to root inside him, or the stings of sorrow and scorn cripple his feet as well. The boy did not call himself Ûkwendô; he was the singular one who dared the forests without a companion. He knew even then that he was Ingwë. Tall and strong and cunning he grew, but few among his own people had eyes to note it. Asmalô watched but never approached. The young man who gathered knowledge on subjects wide, but who was rarely asked to share in it, this was he that would be Ingwë.

As the hunters and warriors bragged of feats and challenged each other in the ritual circle of the tribe, one stood silent. As others watched proud warriors fight to gain honor and fame, he would leave secretly the village of the Minyar. The young man that would be Ingwë was rare among his tribe to delight in silence of others’ voices, to prefer the wind and the fire rings of other villages. He built tentative friendships among the other two tribes, dared to what the other Minyar refused. The boy that the Minyar called Ûkwendô had few willing to admit shared acquaintance among his own tribe, but many knew him of the Tatyar and Nelyar. Strongest of these bonds, long celebrated in the history of the people to come, was to the young men that would be Finwë of the Noldor and Elwë of the Lindar. Elwë of the third tribe had visited the Tatyar village in the company of his parents, looking to trade cooking vessels, fish, and sharp tools. While there Elwë befriended the young craftsman, Finwë, and so would often return to the village or Finwë travel to his. Later another young man would come eager to exchange goods for a knife and be spotted by tall Elwë. Elwë would invite over this fellow outsider, and thus young man that would be called Ingwë was adopted into the friendship of Finwë and Elwë. Older and steadier, the one that would be Ingwë humored their lightness and easy prattle. He appreciated that neither boy could bring themselves to call the Minyar boy by the cruel name. Instead they called him the Kwendê for jest of his taciturn stares. One who hunted alone for food to support both his mother and father, his friends marvelled at the older boy’s skill and considered themselves fortunate in be in his confidence. The man who would be Ingwë was in truth the greatest of the Minyar. But no totems of victories decorated him, for no one else believed there was any honor to be gained by challenging the son of the scarred ones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] (Silm 29)  
> [2] "[The elves] were tenacious therefore of life ...even from the first days protecting their bodies from many ills and assaults (such as disease), and healing them swiftly of injuries, so that they recovered from wounds that would have proved fatal to Men."(HoMe X)


	2. Of the Birth of Indis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised as of 8/23/15

The people of his tribe would say two things about that act of Ingwë's mother, when she lost the use of her arm to drag her husband from the leopard's deadly embrace. First that Maktâmê did it for Alakô was her mate, and it was tribal lore that the first concern of a woman was to the one at her side, he that she saw first when she awoke. That he would always be the primary concern.[3]

Second that it was foolish of her to do it. The man was too badly injured by the predator, and that by going after him all the woman truly accomplished was to injure herself and thus place two burdens upon her people instead of one. She would have better served her son and tribe and the legacy of her husband had she let him die that day, and kept her body strong and whole.

None said what should have been, and was, what the truth should have been said.

That there was one of the Kwendî screaming out in pain, and compassion would not allow anyone to stand aside, to attempt nothing to stop the pain of a fellow being.

That compassion was the greatest strength of her, and the greatest gift she gave into her daughter Indis.

* * *

 The broken man that his tribe called terrible names like Skarwô and Ulgundô, Khyannô and Nukottô had been grievously injured in body, it is true. But the long years of pain had weakened his resolve and spirit. To be so cruelly shunned by one's only home, to have no hope of recovery, no one's strength could have mastered that in the end. Thus the woman with her scarred arms, one that was useless to lift and stroke the faces of her family, held onto the man as he sat by the edge of the camp. Her good arm would thread through his remaining fingers, squeezing them tight in her fear. The hand she held would rarely echo her gesture.

The father of the young man who would become Ingwë watched the waves that gently lapped the shores of the Great Mother Lake. One day, Skarnâ-Maktê knew, the despair would grow too great, that emptiness that she could not fill, not when there was so little spirit inside her as well, and her husband would walk into the embrace of the lake. When the suffering was too burdensome, the Kwendî already knew, one could abandon the body, return to the stars, or that darkness between. And yet the father of the man who would become Ingwë lingered, held back by the feeling of those fingers.

But his eye was empty and looked out upon the lake.

Their son could not watch. To the camps of the Tatyar and Nelyar he walked instead, to find peace among the forest or even to hunt alone among the tall grass, anything to avoid his home. To the Tatyar boy Finwë who had no parents, lost long ago in a tragedy forgotten, and raised as the clever and tolerated nephew of all and none, the man that would be Ingwë went and watched the younger man mold clay vessels for storing food and invent names for the markings Rúmil drew in the clay. To the Nelyar boy Elwë who had two younger brothers, the man that would be Ingwë went and helped his taller friend chase after the boys and their friends, to clean mud from their faces and learn to swim on the lake. Joy was to be hunted outside his village, thus knew the man that would be known as Ingwë Ingweron. He could not continue to bite his tongue and say nothing as the chieftain and highest among his tribe mocked his parents and him, not after he became a man grown. To improve his family's standing drove him like the need for air and water. And the man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could not bear to be witness to the last fading of his father.

One last attempt to save her husband did Maktâmê devise, and begged for another child. A child, she hoped, might give her husband a task to focus on, a reason to not fade. Or at least give her one. And perhaps she knew he was lost to her, and hoped to preserve that last bit of his spirit, create one more thing of joy, something that would be born unscarred.

This plan was mostly unspoken, for it would have been mocked if her tribe learned she wished a child from the weak and grotesque. "Neither of you have the strength for a child," they would have told her. That any child from two with inner fires so low and guttering would be one with a spirit so weakly glowing as to be embers easily stamped out. This was the wisdom of the tribes. But they were wrong, the woman knew, as she watched the first child of her and her husband approach. Her strong son, who carried three dead hares in his hand and knelt before them, swiftly and expertly skinning the animals, spitting the meat and roasting the flesh, then pulling off the best parts to feed his father. All the while with bright blue eyes that refused to release their tears. "My first son is powerful, and learned to make the hunting snares of Tatyar boy," the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê said.

To which, with a helplessness born from many mothers, the young man who would be called Ingwë corrected her, "The snares were from Belekô, a Nelyar."

"It does not matter if the child is not strong," Maktâmê said, "or brings home glory and gifts." Of heartbreaking loveliness was the smile she turned to her son, the one that glanced beyond him to where his father sat near the ring of campfires and picket stakes that ordained the border between the safety of the village and the dangers of the dark wild. "But that child would be mine, and of Alakô. A new life, like you, my son." She left unsaid that any chances for another child grew slim. That the call of the water and the darkness was stronger than her voice and her arms.

A child was conceived, and this would have been joy. But not soon after, when the faintest signs of the child growing inside were present, did the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê wake to see no one resting at her side. In great fear did she run through the camp, searching for the figure that was so manifestly unlike in silhouette from all other Kwendî. But she was unable to see it, unable to call out the name no one spoke, unable to face the truth she knew the second she awoke and felt a coolness from the lack of another body beside her. The man that had once been so swift as to be named for the rushing wind was gone. The despair had called in the lapping tiny waves of the shore, and the Great Mother Lake had swallowed him.

She that was called Skarnâ-Maktê wept, and spat disdainfully into the lake, turning the burning bitterness of her eyes into a wild challenge to all the Minyar who gathered around her. Imin, the first among the Kwendî, he that claimed the title of eldest and leadership of not just his tribe but to speak for all the Speakers, observed her. He permitted this brief display of grief and defiance, and he cautioned his wife, she that was counted first among the women of the Kwendî, and his children to make no move. What threat was the scarred women, the former hunter with useless arms, to them? In their haughty pride they dismissed Skarnâ-Maktê and her grief.

The burst of fury soon gutted itself, and the hopeless tears, and the woman who was once called Maktâmê and envied and praised among all the hunters of the Minyar, she that once delighted in the carefree laughter of her husband and the feel of the wind-stream from his sprinting, wiped away the emotions on her face. Away from the public center of the camp she walked, looking for her son. At the edge of the village she sat, under the shadows from the tall sentry fires. Long she waited, promising the unborn child whose heartbeat echoed her own that there would be hope and strength. That the young man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could support the child, even if she could not. That not all the paths before this tiny new heartbeat were bitterness and absence.

And when her son finally came back from his foraging in the dark forests around the camp, arms full of cycad stems to leach into an edible food, Maktâmê told him of what happened. Ukwendô was the boy mocked, and in this moment he made no word. He only grasped both hands of his mother, the one that could not feel and the one that could, and squeezed them tight. Nothing, he vowed silently, would be as important as a better life for them.

* * *

 For many years dark spirits and evil servants of Melkor had hunted around the lake, shadows of whispering terror masked in shapes to imitate the Valar Oromë who rode Nahar. They were body-snatchers who lurked in the upswept boughs of the pines or the parasitic voids of starlight that clung to the backs of the galloping horses, the subjects of warnings and cautionary songs. The hunters of the Minyar suffered most from the dark hunters. Parties who went on the several day treks to the plains where the best game was found did not return, and fear during those long waits shot up like the fast-growing trees. There had always been fear of an unsuccessful hunt, or that a hunter may be injured or die, as what happened to those once called Alakô and Maktâmê. But the fear was greater now, the danger was greater, and the uncertainty more. By chance the smallest of the three tribes, now the Minyar were very few in number, and they quailed with the terror of these patches of darkness. To the safety of the great campfire rings they began to cling, turning their songs of hunting into that of being hunted. Tales spread of the children of the wise tribe, who had by custom long wandered the woods alone for supplies and curiosity, disappearing. The wails of their grieving parents echoed across the lake. Even the third tribe, who by choice rarely left the shore, tending instead to their reeds and tubers and fish, lost people the these evil spirits. Finally the three chieftains of the tribes, Imin and Tata and Enel, declared that no one was to leave the confines of the camp unless necessary, to always be in range of the light cast by the fires. For safety this was demanded, but now the tribes of the Kwendî were isolated from each other. None suffered as much as the Minyar, who depended on their long hunts for food, who had little skill with catching fish or digging in the muck of the shoreline for food. Nor did they have large stores of pine nuts stored in large clay vessels, a crafty precaution common in the Tatyar villages. The man who would become Ingwë Ingweron glared in impotent rage at the dark forest and the back of his chieftain's head. He most among his tribe traveled alone between the camps, needed so to support his kin. This proclamation doomed everyone, but none so much as the new sibling his mother was about to birth.

When the labor pains began, the young man watched helplessly. Unlike his friend Elwë, who as the eldest of three sons from the leader of one of the smaller Nelyar villages had been around births before, he that would be Ingwë had little knowledge of what to expect. He was not popular among his own kin, and as a figure of ill-omen none wished him near during an important and auspicious event like a birth. One of the Minyar woman, a mother of two with a sister who had also given birth, though that child was among the hunters taken by the spirits, came to assist the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê. It was not a gentle birth, but swift, and soon the woman who had first been named Maktâmê for the lovely strength of her arms held the tiny form of her daughter.

The infant girl was small, but not unnaturally so, with perfect tiny fingers and toes and a soft mop of golden curls.

"Wait to name her," the young man who would be called Ingwë requested, for in those days it was sometimes custom for the parent to wait until the child had grown, to observe what traits developed that would best depict the person, even if this was more common among the second and third tribes than the Minyar. "Do not name her now, in this time of fear, clouded by our grief. She is strong, she will grow up loved, her name should be for her glory."

At this his mother smiled, the first gentle smile since before her husband abandoned them to his despair. She told her son to find a good name, for she could not fathom one, and thanked the other woman for putting aside her evasion of the tribal pariahs to help.

The inspiration for the name would come from an unlikely place, for soon after one of the Nelyar, a young man with pale silver hair name Nôwê sneaked into the Minyar camp. He was a close friend of Elwë's brother and a well-liked member of his tribe, and for the sake of that friend he disregarded the ban placed by the chieftains. He found the young man who would be Ingwë, and with the voice of near panic whispered the dire news. Elwë's parents, the leaders of the small Nelyar village closest to the other two tribes, had be abducted by the shadowy hunters.

Elwë meant to go after them. Wild in grief and need for vengeance, he would dare the dangerous woods and the plains beyond, willingly searching out those whispering spirits that drank in the starlight and gave nothing back, those horrors that preyed on the Kwendî.

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron knew he must join this hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [3] “Thus, the Eldar say, the first thing that each elf-woman saw was her spouse, and her love for him was her first love; and her love and reverence for the wonders of Arda came later.” (HoMe XI) _\- Author's note: This quote is in the running for my least favorite Tolkien line ever._


	3. Of the Three Hunters and the Vala

The Nelyar village was near the marshland of the lake, where one of the rivers that fed the Great Mother Lake spread out into a mesh of channels and reed-beds. The mud squelched under the toes of the young man who would be called Ingwë. He allowed no grimace of discomfort reach his face, for the terrain though wet and unpleasant was familiar to him. The path was not, for Nôwê led not along one of the common paths between the villages but across the sea of reeds and short fern trees. To leave the protective fire ring of the villages was still prohibited by the three clan chieftains and punishment would be swift if they were seen. But the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron disdained the proscriptions of his chief.

Lizards leapt and skittered as the silver-haired man of the Nelyar guided them through the shifting reeds and leafy ferns. His passage was sure and clean as the breeze, and the man that would be Ingwë followed like a golden shadow.

“Belekô fetched the Tatyar friend of Elwê, the one that talks more than a river over large stones,” said Nôwê, pointing with his fishing spear where to ford the stream across their path. “They have been long friends, since before his second brother was born. I was sent to fetch you, for you are wise and strong, Kwendê. Speak sense to my friend, for he plans to hunt the Dark Hunters.” The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to hear the fond nickname that Elwë and Finwë had renamed him in jest, to be Speaker instead of the Unspeaking One, but he did not reply to the silver-haired man. Nor did he ask what sensible words were desired of him, that he dissuade Elwë or join on this foolhardy hunt. The anger that smoldered like hot charcoal in his heart knew which path the outcast of the Minyar preferred. He was the son of hunters, of the swiftness of the wind, and to be caged by fear was anathema to him.

The chieftain of the first tribe had forbidden hunters to go after the Dark Hunters, the voids of starlight that clung like ticks on the backs of horses, the things responsible for the disappearances of so many. They were what could not be hunted and killed and thus none were to venture out to hunt them, the first to awaken had proclaimed, and his command had been repeated by Tata and Enel, the other chieftains of the Kwendî. Elwë was no hunter as the man who would be Ingwë was, but anger and grief paid this no heed.

The sentry torches that ringed the Nelyar village were half-lit, though the central fire pit was bright. The round huts of the third tribe, woven reed walls packed with clay and capped by large pointed thatch roofs, loosely ringed the central fire like oversized mushrooms. A young man of the third tribe perched atop one of the houses, the firelight gleaming off the dark silver of his hair. Seeing their approach, he scampered sure-footed off the house like a squirrel and shouted to the travellers. Loudly he told them to hurry, that everyone was gathered by the great longhouse where fish were cleaned and smoked and stored.

The man called Nôwê, later Círdan, and he that would be Ingwë Ingweron were last to arrive. Already they could hear voices.

Taller than any of his kin or the man that would be Ingwë, of a height only with the first awaken of all the elves, was the one called Elwë, and his implacable face was visible over the heads of the people around him. He stood before the door of the longhouse, holding a spear in one hand with a cloak of finely-woven rushes and a heavy pack around his shoulders. The long silver of his hair, darker than the near-white of Nôwê or his other brother Olwë, fell down his back in tangled waves of starlight. The remoteness of the stars was in his face and their piercing fire in his eyes.

As nervous as the half-tamed wolves that some Kwendî fed food scraps, the youngest brother, Elmo of the climbing feet and loud voice, joined his brothers and a young woman of the Nelyar whose hands covered the swelling of a child. They watched the approach of Nôwê and the Minya, but the eyes of Elwë seemed to see nothing.

Already present was the young man of the second tribe, whose hands held no spear. Finwë babbled an incessant stream of meaningless words, sounds that flowed beside the grim face of Elwë without touching his ears. The inventive and talkative boy of the second tribe could craft many words, but he did not understand this grief or need. With no memory of parents and no experience of loss, his pleading to Elwë that the older boy not go were useless. The noise was useful at least for the young man his friends called Kwendê to find them.

“He shall go, Phinwego,” proclaimed the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. “I shall hunt with him.”

The cacophony from dark-haired young man stopped, startled by the firm words from his quiet friend. He turned to look at the equally mask-like face of the friend he knew as Kwendê, then back to Elwë. With a steadiness that would surprise many present, Finwë said, “Then I will join you.”

The young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to see the courage in the face of his Tatyar friend. That Finwë held a knife of bone with a smooth handle of carved antler in his hand, blocked from view until they had moved in close, was also reassuring. The grip was steady, though the face was pale. Less a hunter than even Elwë, the young man named Finwë had little skill with tracking beasts and knew none of the songs for hunting and killing. Friendship and resolve were their own song, though, knew the young man who had lost his father to a mad-driven beast and the scorn of his tribe, and grief and anger a guide chant as sure as any hunting song of the Minyar Kwendî.

Elwë moved finally, a slow nod of the head and a blink of eyes that spoke gratitude when a tongue could still not speak. His mouth was flat and thin, but the boiling anger of his eyes, the helpless fury that wished to lash indiscriminately as a thunderstorm, narrowed to the purpose of a spear of lightning. Collectively the crowd waited, with the stillness of a fisher on the lake - or the people when a chieftain wished to address an assembly of all of a tribe. “Gather water. We will return only when we find the Dark Hunters or whom has sent them,” Elwë addressed to the gathered crowd. “Wolwê leads until I return. Do not leave the shore.”

Elmo made a cry of protest, but his other brother, eyes red with tears, held him back, and bowed to their eldest. Heartsick and afraid, Olwë would obey. Yet the arms around his youngest brother were tight, as if any pressure were lessened then Elmo would slip away like smoke into the darkness between the stars, become as lost to them as their parents were, as lost as any abducted by the Dark Hunters, as lost as Olwë feared Elwë would be.

Elwë placed a hand atop each of his brother’s heads, made as if to address words to them, but no sound came. Instead he nodded once more.

A woman with a necklace of white shells whispered the story of what happened as she filled a pair of bladder-skins with water and gave them to the young men that would accompany Elwë. Her eyes would dart to the three brothers, like a moth that could not pulled away from the flames.

 

The people of the village had noticed a foul taste in one of the stream channels that fed into the Great Mother Lake and found dead frogs and fish floating near its banks. A dam was hastily constructed to keep the taint from lake, but great concern and debate gripped the tribe. This had happened before, when a dying animal collapsed in a pool or steam and spread its death sickness down the water. Still the people were worried, for the growing malice of the Dark Hunters worsened all fears, and the two leaders of the village decided the need for knowledge of potential danger to the Kwendî was too great, that the ban of leaving the safety of the villages must be disobeyed. The parents of Elwë, Olwë, and Elmo went to investigate upstream. They promised to discover the cause of the taint and carry word back to Enel and Enelyë, chieftain and chieftess of the third tribe of the Kwendî. The waters of the Great Mother Lake were safety and life for all the elves, but most of all the largest of the tribes whose voices echoed the song of its water. Despair greater than what was already faced would rule if the lake was darkened.

They did not return. Too many stars had circled the dark of the sky, and the people of the village knew their leaders had been taken by the Dark Hunters.

 

Waterskins slung across their backs, spears and knives as well, cloak ties fastened and hair braided away from eyes, the three young men accounted themselves prepared. The man that would become Ingwë reached down into the white clay near the lake shore and painted thick lines across his face. Around his eyes and across his jaw he marked with cool white clay, then quietly and steadily painted the faces of his friends, a line across the brow of Finwë, three circles on Elwë’s forehead and a wide stroke around the brow to circle under each eye. Only a custom of the Minyar was it to paint the faces and bodies before a hunt, or the more permanent markings for feats of renown and victories in the dueling rings. Yet Finwë and Elwë did not question the actions of their friend, or rub at the ticklish marks as the clay mud cooled against their faces. Nor did the man that would be Ingwë tell them that the marks were death-masks.

One of the Nelyar reached a final time to restrain Elwë with a pleading hand. A weaver of reeds with eyes as green as leaves and a face small and brown and worried, he cried to Elwë, “What if you perish too? What shall we do?”

"I shall return," said Elwë in a voice firmer than the black of the sky.

These words and their certainty would long be repeated among the people of the third tribe. The trust of the Lindar was built on these words, for they would be repeated with the same certainty when Elwë went to the Undying Lands. And their echo would hold the heart of his kin when he would go missing in the woods at the Hinder Land’s last shore. The weaver and his kin would wait for Elwë, as they waited and watched him leave now. The tall man with hair falling like star-silver down his back faded into the dark shadows of the forest outside the ring of fire. But like the wheeling stars, the people of the village of the reeds knew Elwë would reappear.

* * *

As the three trekked through the fir and peheún forest, the silence of this trip struck them as unnatural. Among these trees near his village Elwë would usually remark how his youngest brother Elmo would disappear into the high branches, leaping from tree to tree under the shadow of the dark needles, only to return under dire threat of brotherly retribution with sap and dirt on his fingers and hair. Or how his other brother Olwë never went into the forest, mostly in fear of their youngest brother and his penchant for lobbing pine cones down on unsuspecting travellers beneath the trees. No laughing reminiscences did the oldest son of the third tribe share this journey.

Even the Tatyar youth, the one that would later be Finwë and first King of the Noldor in Aman, was silent, which would be the most peculiar aspect of this hunt if anyone was to ask the opinion of the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron.

A light mist of rain started to fall, warm with diffuse droplets more akin to the mists off the lake than the drenching rains of a storm that thundered, and thus the young men were mostly untroubled by it. The young man of the Tatyar, the usually gregarious Finwë, unwrapped the large shawl from his shoulders and arranged it carefully to cover his head, attentive to comb the colorful fringe to hang neatly and smoothly. He was proud of his shawl, for though the thin fabric had been woven by one of the Nelyar, and the paint likewise bartered from the Minyar, it was Finwë who had carefully dyed the long fringe in alternating tassels of bright orange and woad blue. In the bright campfires of the villages the vivid colors made him a figure of attention, and he was always keen to drape his shawl and strings of glass beads to the most flattering effect. The beads had been left at home, and without the torchlight there was no illumination to reveal the bright colors, but still Finwë brushed the long fringe and tucked the ends securely around his neck. “It will be harder to hear anything approach,” he whispered to young man he thought of as Kwendê.

“I shall ask the tree,” said Elwë in a flat voice, brushing them aside to walk up to a tall specimen. His friends looked at each other from the corners of their eyes but said nothing, for they were accustomed to this strange folbile of the Nelyar. In a way it was comforting to hear Elwë speak of such, to show a sign of behavior more alike himself. Grim and silent was not the conduct of the oldest son of the village near the river mouth, for he loved to talk on trips through the forest as much as Finwë prattled while crafting in the village. Deep and unwelcome was the grief and anger that stilled Elwë’s tongue, stopped him from speaking long of his brothers’ antics or the forest they travelled through. Usually when Elwë began addressing the trees themselves, talking to the pines as if they would suddenly answer back, was when his friends would demand he shut up. Now the man that would be Ingwë took it as a good sign, to watch Elu run a hand over the bark of the arboreal giant and question who had passed between its boughs.

The trees were alive, and there was something inside them, as with all things that grew and could die, that thing the oldest of the elves, the ones that awoke on the shore, called a spirit, a phaja. One could sense the phaja with enough focus, though it was common knowledge that the Minyar of the first tribe could feel spirits, even emotion and the edge of thoughts, stronger than the other Speakers. It was one of the unspoken advantages of the hunt, to find prey, to feel the songs of the fellow hunters and know intentions. Yet a phaja did not equal a voice, and it was undeniable fact that only the Kwendî had voices to use and understand. The young man that would be Ingwë found the practice of the third tribe to speak to the trees the height of foolishness. Far better to waste one’s efforts, if one must, on the animals that at least had a mouth in which to make sounds.

With no reply, Elwë used the advantage of his great height to reach the branches of a younger pine, scaling the ladder of branches before leaping to the crown of the taller tree. Soon he was lost to sight high in the boughs, and Finwë shivered and rubbed his arms, nervously glancing from the knife at his belt to the masklike face of his friend to the dark branches that hid Elwë from view. Rain dripped off their faces, rinsing off some of the white clay, removing some of the lines of death-seekers.

Elwë climbed back down from the tree, shaking his head before leaping the last several feet to the spongy earth, the long silver braid of his hair falling behind him like the tail of a cat. He grabbed the spear he had stabbed into the loam by the tree roots and brushed the dirt that clung to the stone blade. With a small shrug he returned to his friends, but his face darkened in concern as he saw the crease of concentration on his taller friend’s brow. “Kwendê, what is it? I saw nothing from the heights, yet you look as if you sense something. You are the skilled hunter among us; what is it?”

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron hesitated. What he felt was with mind and not eyes or ears, and was faint and moving away from where they stood. He knew it was unlike anything he knew before, but felt like firelight against the skin on the other side of the picket fence, or mist when it was still out in the middle of the lake, or wind that blew coldly across the top-crowns of trees while leaving the air at the ground still.

A muffled echo floated down through the trees, yet it was not thunder.

Three pairs of eyes met and three young men determined they go in the direction of the sound that was not thunder.

The last of the warm light rain stopped, and the three pulled the cloaks from their heads, shook the clinging water from their limbs, gripped the weapons ready at their sides. By silent acknowledgement they agreed that Elwë take point.

The ground sloped up, and the trees began to thin.

Once more they heard the echo of the sound that was not thunder.

Flashes of silver, like fast fading stars, sparked in the distance, but the pinpricks of light were low to the ground, and there was no lake up ahead to reflect starlight, so the vision made no sense. Again there pairs of eyes met and frowned. There was the sound of an animal running through the underbrush, the even gallop of a horse or bison, but the beats were subtly wrong, too widely spaced for a normal creature, and the strange muffled music behind the drumming sound could not be of any herd that had been hunted. His suspicions deepened when the man that would be Ingwë connected the soft pattern of beats to the quick-fading flashes of light.

The sound that was not thunder called a third time, and it was not an echo.

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron could sense the unknown ahead of them, the thing he had no words for, and moved to shield Elwë and Finwë, to be the first to meet it as it came. Yet it was not out of fear to protect them, for even then he knew whatever approached was not of the Dark Hunters. What he felt was not a void in the starlight, a shadow of terror, something that could harm the people. The man that would be Ingwë knew with the same firmness that the Great Mother Lake was full of water, that fire would burn the hand, that his father was dead and that he loved his newborn sister, that the thing that approached was not dangerous to the elves, would not harm them and steal them away.

Ingwë would later describe the impressions he felt before he saw the Vala Oromë, of the sensations before Nahar rode into the glade, sparks flying from his golden hooves, of what he felt in his mind before he saw the strange form riding what seemed a horse. When Oromë first appeared he would seem a giant figure of tree shadow and caged lightning and dappled pelts and the sound of antlers clashing that somehow flickered and became a person, lessened into a man-sized shape without removing the sensation that a star burned in fusion behind the light of a torch. In lines of poetry Ingwë Ingweron would attempt to capture that warmth and joy and a brightness that the eyes did not see but heard. Of how the figure felt like the spirits of the trees that Elwë talked to and of all the roots of the trees into one great essence, of Elwë himself and his love for those trees, the love for his younger brothers, the angry desire to hunt down and punish those that had stolen his parents. Of how the Vala seemed to echo all at once every hunting song of the Minyar, the ones of watching wolf and lion, of learning the animals, of venturing forth, the long trek to the plains, the swift running of deer and horse and bison, the hunt itself, and the victory or defeat afterwards. That his voice was every song at once and none, that he was also the silence in the forest with only the murmur of the leaves in the wind, the silence of waiting for a snare to spring or the silent nod to a deer with the relaxing of a sling with the decision not to shoot. Of Maktâmê’s laugh as she flung the spear, of Elmo sticky with pine sap, of Elwë declaring he would hunt the Dark Hunters and Finwë’s courage to stand with his friend, of the successful parties of the Minyar carrying a half-butchered buck into the village and smiling and singing as they handed the blood-rich liver and organs to the Tatyar craftsman who made the spearheads. Of the search, be it for food or vengeance or solitude or joy. Of the forest. Never before had he that would be Ingwë seen a Power, seen Oromë, but he recognized the song inside him.

Ingwë lowered his spear and did not cry in alarm as Finwë did or shout a challenge as did Elwë.

He laughed, a heart of joy and wonder as he felt the echo of wonder and surprise from the figure atop the silvery horse.

“You have found us,” he shouted in a glad voice, overcome with laughter at the unbidden thought that the figure had been hunting for them as much as they thought they had been hunting him.

“And what I have I found?” answered a voice like the baying of hounds and the clash of antlers and the gentle rustle of leaves under a favorite tree, echoing the same mixture of laughter and joy and wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> peheún = [monkey puzzle tree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana). One of the greater difficulties with this fic and setting is adhering to canon about the lack of flowers blooming east of Valinor until the elves arrive and the gap in the Pelori Mountains is opened. I've thus attempted to limit the number of angiosperms around Cuiviénen.


	4. Of the Names of the Valar

Now it was accounted in various manners and places of the Vala Oromë and his first meeting among the elves. Knowledge he shared and lasting friendship, the names of creation and the one whom had created, new skills with which to enrich the lives of the elves, and most precious to the three that had discovered him, the perpetrator and motives behind the Dark Hunters that had so plagued their villages.

The three elves watched the figure dismount from the giant silver horse, landing softly in the loam of the forest floor with a hunting cat’s grace. His form looked like that of the Kwendî, standing tall and upright on two legs, and the empty hands he held out in front of his body with open gestures signalling unarmed and wishing no harm were no different from those of any elf. In the shadows of the forest it was hard to discern details, but as the Vala knelt to the ground, numerous fireflies floated up from the underbrush, and the greenish tint of the light that the insects emitted brightened everyone in the glen. In their light the figure was clearly a man in shades of brown from his hair and skin to his tunic and leggings that tucked into a pair of soft fur boots. Only his eyes, bright green and shining like the fireflies, and the white of his smiling teeth, were different. The stranger unclasped the cloak, which when he first entered had seemed to be a mass of budding branches flowing behind him but was in the glow of the fireflies only an ordinary length of green and brown felt, and folded it underneath his body to give a comfortable and dry seat. That was a signal on its own, for felt, especially so soft and richly dyed, was for the garments of the Minyar leaders and carefully treated. He sat as a storyteller might, as one of the first to awaken eager to explain a new skill or discovery to the rest of the tribe. As Oromë quietly waited for the elves to move, the fireflies settled onto his hair and shoulders, casting strange shadows on his face, but his gentle smile was easy to see.

Ingwë knew this was no Dark Hunter, that this rider would never harm him or his friends, and so he undid his own cloak and sat on the ground, folding his arms and legs in the position one took when ready to listen to a long song of many deeds and a lengthy hunt. More fireflies floated over and settled in his golden hair, twinkling like netted stars. Elwë and Finwë cautiously followed their friend’s example and lowered their spears and knelt before the strange figure.

“Greetings,” said Oromë. "We have questions to answer."

Ingwë laughed.

With that unexpected and rare sound, his friends relaxed. If wise and solemn Kwendë was unafraid, then his example they would follow. Finwë cupped two of the fireflies in his hands gently, and Elwë repeated their most pressing concern, for like his Minyar friend, he could feel in the sight of the mind that the figure kneeling before him was no elf, no matter how closely his appearance matched that of the Kwendî.

The Vala could easily answer his own question of who the three elves were, that they were the long foretold and eagerly awaited Children of Ilúvatar, the second melody of the design for creation that had been Sung into being. Who Oromë was, and what, could be answered by the titles of ‘Hunter’ and ‘Lord of the Forest’, though to explain in words everything that those simple titles encompassed and that of the Powers, the Valar, was harder. That there was a One responsible for the planning of the universe and its creation, from every grain of sand to the bright stars to the passage of time to the world itself was not a difficult concept to grasp, for the vastness of such a thought matched the vastness of Ilúvatar itself. _Eä_ was fitting, the three elves thought, for the very first of the Kwendî to awake had been Imin, and he awoke with the cry of _Ele!_ It was a cry to behold the world in either case. And that there was many people under Ilúvatar that worked as a tribe did to carry out the needed tasks, each appointed by personal aptitude and interests, made sense. What Finwë found incredulous was that Ilúvatar, and beings such as Oromë before him, had created the world and everything vast or minute in it through singing.

“You mean if you wanted a clay jar you could just sing a tune and - _elâ!_ \- a pot appears in your hand?” Finwë questioned, a skeptical look on his face as his calloused potter’s hands mimicked a fire sparking to life or a solid object needing several hours worth of labor poofing into existence like smoke.

“Not I,” said Oromë. “I am no craftsman, creator of tools from the earth and stone. For that song you would want the one more powerful than me who is skilled with his hands, a most creative mind, whose delight and domain is the rock behind our feet.” The eldest of the three elves felt the faint pressure against his mind while Oromë paused, brushing against their thoughts like a cool breeze for more words the elves could understand. “Mbartanô perhaps would be the name you would call him, the World-Artificer. His are the plates of stone upon which everything rests, and his hammer makes the mountains and valleys.”

“Must be a large hammer,” Finwë jested.

“He has many hammers,” the Vala corrected, “and some are hammers and some are ideas one uses like a hammer. His works can be small objects as well, not only the mountains. The stone axes you knap into useful shapes, that is him.”

“Aulë,” said Ingwë.

“Yes,” replied the Vala gravely, “the Inventor. And in our own language, if we did not desire to sing the full extent of his name, the shortened form would sound aloud similar to that.”

“Your own language?” Finwë questioned. Elwë shoved him with a half-exasperated grin.

The Vala opened his mouth to speak, and strange syllables poured out, harsh as breaking rocks and logs popping in bonfires layered over the cries and roars of animals and the crashing waterfall. The creature behind them that looked like a tall horse with a coat as silver as Elwë’s long hair flicked its ears and snapped its tail against its flanks. Elwë and Finwë winced, and the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron wondered why he could not discern the meaning of any word. He felt that if he but listened long enough he could have.

Elwë, raised in a tribe of singers, had no difficulty believing songs’ power. He had watched new shoots rise from the river mud to the encouraging voice of his brother’s wife and how Nowë never had a net unravel if he sang over it. Visiting the nearby village of his friend, he had seen how Finwë and the other Noldor sang to track the time for the kilns so the leather-soft pots covered in wood ash came out hard and shining with green and brown glaze. Therefore he had found Finwë’s doubting question about singing a jar into existence silly, for from one angle that was exactly what the potter did. A song could describe an object or place never seen, or bring out any emotion in the listener, or strengthen or change what was already made. It was the Void that confused Elwë, that song alone drew out from nothing the creation of everything. He wondered if an elf could learn those powerful songs, the songs the Valar had used, and hearing the harsh and layered language of the Valar, he believed those powers.

When the three asked the Vala his name, Oromë sighed like the wind through dense leaves. “If I were to describe my name...the sound of horns,” he said and hefted a white object from his belt that none remembered being there. In his hands was the horn of a large auroch capped with rims of gold, and he brought the object to his lips and blew softly through the narrow end.

“The sound we heard,” Elwë said with soft wonder. “Arâmê.”

Elwë’s new word closely matched the sound the horn had made, which was richer than the reed flutes of the Nelyar. As gentle as the sound had been, it still recalled the brightness of lightning. The Vala smiled and nodded. “Arâmê you may call me. And what may I address the three of you as?” he asked in polite formality.

“Elwê, for the stars,” answered the tall and silver-haired Elwë.

“Phinwê,” said his friend. “And it is the same ending as Elwê; don’t listen to them if they tease otherwise. Phin is like the sound we use for a tress of hair, but I do not know if my parents named me for anything, hair or otherwise. It is not remarkable; the color is very common in both my tribe and in the third tribe from which Elwê comes from, not like his silver color or Mahtân, who has hair like a fox pelt.”

“Might it be you were born with a lot of hair on your head already?” teased Elwë. “My brother was born with very little, but his good friend entered the world with a full thatch of hair atop his head.”

The Vala turned to face the last of the companions.

“My friends address me as Kwendê,” he said.

The Vala laughed. “How appropriate, for you were first I heard to speak.”

Again there was that feeling of another mind, no more invasive than the sensation of meeting another person’s eyes squarely. ‘Your name is Ingwë,’ the voice that was not spoken words said.

‘Yes,’ Ingwë thought.

‘But if it the other name you wish to be spoken aloud, I shall, if I am accounted a friend.’

Ingwë could not help the smile that spread across his face. The joy from sharing his name, the secret that had sustained him during the lonely and dark years, almost prompted him to foolishness. Aloud he spoke, “We know you are not one of the Dark Hunters, for all that you are a Power and no elf and that you perch atop a horse as it runs.”

“Riding,” Oromë corrected. “When Næchærra grants me, for his speed is greater than my own, and together we can outrun and catch the monsters we hunt.” His hand motioned to the silver horse behind him. The animal raised its head from where it had been grazing at the ferns, and from the light of its eyes it was obviously no more a mere horse than Oromë an elf. “But it is the name of the Dark Hunters you want, the ones who have taken forms in mockery of me as to hurt the Children of Ilúvatar and undoubtedly blame me for it.”

“Yes,” Elwë hissed.

Oromë’s face grew dark, as if thunderclouds covered what should have been the bright lightning of his eyes. “Mailikô,” he said in a voice with no less venom than Elwë’s, “the Greedy One. He was one of us, in some ways the greatest and most powerful. The brother of my leader. But he rebelled against the One, jealous and hateful of the world Ilúvatar bade us create and protect, and he has sought ever since his first rebellion to destroy or maim to his own purpose all that we hold dear."

Of Melkor and his misdeeds the Vala Oromë had many words and none were kind. In return the three elves told of Dark Hunters and how many from all three tribes had been abducted, until the chieftains forbade their people from leaving the safety of the village bonfires. Of this Oromë had divined from their thoughts, but the confirmation of how dire the problem and how many had already been taken troubled him. His self-appointed task was to hunt Melkor’s foul creatures and prevent tragedies such as these from happening, and his grief at his failure was palpable. “We had refrained from war against Mailikô in fear that our struggles would have inadvertently harmed your people still sleeping. Never did we imagine that you would wake and our enemy find you first. It is our failing that you were harmed, your parents taken.”

Elwë refused this guilt. “You did not know. Did not know where we were or that we were here awake or that this Mailikô was here and preying on us. I would not blame Tata for the fish my brother did not catch. And you are an enemy of Mailikô and his Dark Hunters and have vowed now to help.”

Politely no mention was made of the undercurrent to Elwë's words, that resentment would return threefold and caustic if promises were not kept, vengeance not rendered.

“More than just I,” said Oromë. “But first I request you take me to your villages, let me see the rest of the Children and speak to your leaders. And point me in the direction of where you best guess these villains of Mailikô ride in imitation of me and steal your kin. That,” Oromë hissed, “they shall do no more.”

Nahar behind him raised his silver head from grazing and flattened his ears, then gave off a high-pitched scream that Ingwë recognized from following the horse herds on the open plains. The head stallion’s warning call to approaching predators that was, and Nahar’s golden hooves suddenly looked much sharper and heavier.

The three elves agreed to lead Oromë back to Elwë’s village and from then onto the other villages, especially those of Imin, Tata, and Enel. Finwë in particular was nervous to take the Vala to someone with authority who could ask and approve the right questions. Elwë was worried for his brothers and the rest of his people, wishing to reassure them, and the young man that even now thought of himself as Ingwë thought of his mother and sister.

As the three elves guided Oromë and Nahar through the pine forest back to Elwë’s village, Finwë tentatively seeing if he could rest a hand on Nahar’s flanks and pet the giant horse as they walked and Elwë introducing the notable trees to the Lord of the Forest, the man that would be Ingwë observed the Vala. Something about the Power unsettled him, though his great soul shone out clear as lightning and as pure as freshly unfurled leaves. Finally the Minyar youth identified the cause of his hunter’s instincts prickling all the hairs across his neck and arms to stand alert.  

The form of Oromë, that seemed to be a brown-haired Kwendi in soft leathers and the finest bow and hunting horn, was not steady. The flesh around his eyes was shifting, pulling in the most miniscule ways to change the shape of the eyes. Those green eyes, imbued with divine light, did not change, but the manner in which the lashes lengthened and eyelids folded transformed his eyes into unfamiliar forms. The nostrils of his nose were flaring, not in the act of taking breath, but because his nose was another feature of his face shifting to a new appearance. Oromë’s face twisted subtlely not as one did under the sway of emotions but through shifts of bone and muscle, his cheekbones rising and falling, chin lengthening to mimic Elwë, then broadening to be as square as Finwë, then shifting again. As the man that would be Ingwë watched, the facial features finally settled into a slightly aquiline nose and wide eyes, with oddly familiar broad lips. “Have you chosen a face to your full satisfaction now?” the elf said to Oromë, teasing.

Solemnly the Vala nodded. “We did not remember clearly what forms the Children would have, in all the minute details and proportions. This is an excellent form, well-balanced and agile and strong. And many pelt variations, more than what I see here, if your friend Phinwê is to be understood.”

The description made the man that would become Ingwë Ingweron smile. “We are of all three tribes, my friends and I, and it was these small differences in appearance that the first awoken used to divide themselves, as well as temperament and which of the three first couples they liked best.”  

“How appropriate,” said Oromë. “Yes, I have decided since I shall walk among the Children, I shall share your shape, and thus corrected my appearance. Odd though, for both Aulë and I recalled that your lower faces would also have hair. I rather liked that, those beards.” Oromë rubbed at his chin.

“So what shape would it be, if you were not among us?” the elf asked, his mind groping for understanding. “If you were to visit horses, would you look like Na-” here Ingwë stumbled over the strange name, finally settling on the abbreviated ‘Nahar’. “Or would you shape yourself to another form?”

Oromë smiled. “Nahar? So be it. And yes, I could if I wish take the same of a horse, though to run on four hooves I prefer the great elk. The wolf, the panther, the elephant, or the weasel, those shapes I find pleasing. And,” the Vala winked, “if I was feeling particularly lazy, I would take the form of a sloth.”

The other two elves turned to listen to this discussion, though of the three, only the older two had seen the giant lumbering creature Oromë spoke of, the giant sloth with its clawed front paws. Slow and strong, ponderously heavy with fat and muscle, the ground sloths would easily feed two or three villages, if spears could evade the claws and pierce the thick and armored skin. The Minyar hunters chose other prey, knowing there were faster animals but safer and easier to hunt.

“So what do you really look like? Your true form?”

Oromë laughed, for even Ingwë perceived that such a question had as answer that which Finwë would not understand, at least not after only one conversation. Had Finwë the skill to see _phaja_ as well, the other boy would not expect spirits could be easily described like concrete objects. The Vala attempted anyway. “Vibrations.”

“What?”

“So much of this world is but vibrations of essence. Light and song. They are vibrations. I am no different.” The white teeth and green eyes on that shifting face smiled.”I am Arâmê, and I look exactly how I choose to look. That is my true form.”

Light discussion among the three elves on which animal they would choose to be if they could like Oromë shift their physical forms preoccupied the remainder of the walk back to Elwë’s village, until they were close enough to see the palisade illuminated by firelight. A great outcry there was in the village at the return of Elwë and his companions, greater still for the three were accompanied by an unfamiliar man and a horse that shone bright white in the firelight and did not shy or run from people. Unlike the wolves, horses were flighty creatures and rarely seen so close by the fishermen and reed-weavers. Oromë and Nahar held back from entering through the village gate until the crest of fear dissolved away. He that thought of himself as Ingwë waited beside them as Finwë smiled and shouted appeasing words and Elwë’s firm and repeated proclamations calmed the crowd. “He is the Good Hunter,” Elwë explained to his village, and it was the stern glare of their new leader that quieted the uproar more than the goodly light from Oromë’s eyes. “He is not of the ones that harmed us, but he that hunts them. He has come to help us.”

Convinced so, the Nelyar raised their voices to the songs of welcome, and lit more torches and sentry fires so the light could reveal the details of the new arrivals. Delight and excitement rose out of their withdrawn alarm. Olwë and Elmo pulled away from embracing their elder brother and stroking his face in relief at his return to bellow out that a path be opened in the crowd so this Good Hunter could enter.

Arched neck and hooves prancing, Nahar trotted through the gate to gasps from the elves, basking in their wondering admiration. “Smug insufferable servant,” the Vala murmured. Ingwë swallowed another laugh, for Oromë's tone had no harshness. The Hunter followed the stallion into the village, smiling in wonder at the circular huts and the lines of salted fish hanging from wooden frames, at the bright torches and the hands that held them, and most of all to the faces of the elves that stared up at him. “Greetings, Children. I am Arâmê,” and with an indulgent sigh, “and he is Nahar.”


	5. Of the Beginning of Days

Of the fellow Powers like himself did these gathered elves of the Nelyar village who now called themselves the followers of Elwë question of Oromë, wanting to know of the Powers what were their numbers and their strengths and where the Valar lived and what all the Powers looked like. The total number of Powers who came into this world from the Timeless Halls, a hand gesturing to the dark sky but obviously pointing to some indescribable void beyond it, Oromë could not answer, though he explained that of his kindred, fourteen were accounted the strongest, the appointed leaders. Fourteen, the man that would be Ingwë noticed smugly, was the first number of the Minyar after Imin and Iminyë found a cluster of golden-haired elves sleeping and claimed them as their people, back in the beginning when the elves were awaking and searching for one another.[7] Evenly divided by seven were the Valar, but as Oromë explained, not an even seven couples. Thanks to the query from a woman of Elwë’s tribe, the gathered elves learned that Oromë’s people had kinship bonds that the second generation of elves possessed but not the first, for the Unbegotten were sibling-less. A strange dissimilarity, thought the followers of Elwë, for all that the Powers had emerged from the thought of Ilúvatar just as the first of the elves had awoken in the clay. 

“We haves bonds to one another,” said Oromë, “many different types of which I search for your words to describe. Some were a part of us at our creation by the One who made all. Some we found among each other, that we saw a likeness in our songs and what we loved. Friendship and that internal qualities by which you divide yourselves into tribes would be the parallel. Then there is one of whom the bond between us was set at her inception, whom I love I would say the way you, Elwê, love these two before you that you call brothers.” Oromë pointed to Olwë and Elmo. “The way the two who raced up to see you returned safe, that is very familiar. When I return to my home, my sister who is swiftest of all us shall race up to me and demand an accounting of my journeys. She shall be cross if I have come to harm, delight in anything that pleased me or my victories, and then shall still scold me for leaving in the first place, while understanding why I must go. Is that not the bond of siblings? Then the deer that surround her wherever she goes shall nibble at my hair, and I will have to shoo them away.” 

He pointed back to the questioner, a heavily pregnant Lindar woman with her dark braided hair twined with duck feathers and whose hands gripped those of Elwë’s youngest brother. “The one you would say I am husband to, that I love as Elmo loves you, she is very dear to me, and shall be the second to greet me. Her song is the fairest of anything I have heard, since long before I entered Arda. That is how we found one another, the bonds between us, in the place that had no place or time. We would at first sing alone, or with those the One had said we shared a bond, but as we sang and listened to others sing, we found those that we preferred to sing with, or those who singing we liked most to listen to and they to listen to us. It is that way with my wife. Beauty itself would be her name, Banâ, and not be sufficient enough to encompass her. Her songs are ever those of new life, of the creation of newness and beauty, of the young things. She is the seeds that will make new trees, of the nursing animals and act to make them, the new leaves that unfurl pale and green. Always she is newness and youth and love.” Oromë’s voice sang with love to describe his wife, and even without the mind-sight of the Minyar, all the elves present could feel the tender joy and see without sight the image of a woman none had met. It was not a clear picture, just a pair of soft hands cupping a caterpillar and allowing the fuzzy creature to crawl up her fingers, but there was a golden light that infused the image. 

"Not all of us have bonds of that you would call siblings or spouse. The one that delights most in the song of water, be it the smallest of rivers or the oceans that make this lake seem small, has neither. Ulumô is what his name would be, before you interrupt to ask.” Oromë gave a teasing glance to Finwë, and that the Power could joke with such easy and gentle humor dissipated the villagers’ lingering worry. “But he does have companions who also delight most in the songs of water, river, lake, and ocean.”

The wife of Elmo smiled and placed a hand over her bulging body, her other hand holding her husband. “I am most glad to hear that, Good Hunter. That the powers that made this world are like us. Or that it is the other way around, that we are like you? I would like most to meet your spouse the Everyoung.”

Oromë smiled to the wife of Elmo, Linkwînen of the reed cloak and duck feathers twined in her hair. “There is the echo of her song in you, Linkwînen.”[8]

“What of children?”

To this question Oromë grew still. “That we do not have, nor can.” His solemn face returned to the bright smile, “but of the weaker Powers that follow me and my wife, our tribe perhaps you would call them, there are a few small and foolish ones that despite my love I would say I am in constant exasperation trying to tend and parent them. One of my hunters, for example! Oh, he is very strong and determined, very skilled, but he has no head for directions or time, constantly distracted and forgetting his duties. Hopelessly in love, the poor sod, so I forgive him always if he errors. But I worry, for the Enemy may take advantage of him. The reason I was riding in this direction was to find him, for he has not checked in with me in a year. The explanation could be as innocent as he found something silver and stopped to admire it. Or it could be ill.”

“The Enemy steals your people as he does ours?” Elwë asked.

The likeness between Oromë and Elwë grown more pronounced than ever, grave did the Power answer, “Sometimes. Or Mailikô convinces them to join his side, through persuasion or by overpowering them. Many of his number are such, Gothombauk and the other horrible ones,  _ ñgwalaraukô  _ if I were to use your words. And then there are the willing traitors like he that was chief servant of Aulë. Ah, there is a story I must tell.”

Once more the Vala regaled his listeners of how he and his brethren fought against their Enemy in the vast expanses outside the world, the emptiness on the far side of the stars, and then in Arda itself, back before anything grew in the soil or in the water, not even the algae and tiniest particles that the minnows and shrimp fed on. How the very stone raged as molten fire so there was no firm land to find purchase, and Aulë was sorely pressed. He told of how Mailikô used the extremes of temperature to turn Ulumô’s waters to steam or ice, then pausing to explain what ice was, as the land surrounding Cuiviénen received no cold snow. Fortunately for the need of example there were mountains in the distance tall enough to see that their crests were paler than the rock below. The concept of snow kindled a new wanderlust in the breast of the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. Before Oromë, the elf had not pondered the possibilities that the distant mountains may hold. 

Continuing on, Oromë told of how their battles were long and inconclusive until help arrived in the form of a newcomer. Uninvited, unexpected, but gratefully needed and welcomed, Tulkatho defeated all the Enemy’s followers and scared Mailikô away from Arda. Oromê described Tulkatho running into battle with laughter and a ruddy smiling face, carrying no weapons and using little in the way of strategies to fight but so strong as to not matter, and of his good humor and golden hair. Collectively everyone turned to look over at the only member of the first tribe that these elves had any regular contact with. Appraising Elwë’s friend, together the Lindar shook their heads and decided there was no resemblance.

Oromë described the time of peace and bliss that existed for a while, of their first home in Arda on a green island in the center of a lake. Two tall pillars topped with bonfires Aulë crafted, one to the south and the other to the north, and together much of the entire world was bathed in light. Here the Powers rested and made long celebration of their victory against their Enemy, though their chieftain mourned the brother who had turned against the One. He hoped that having been driven from the confines of Arda perhaps Mailikô would return to Iluvatar and repent the folly of his destructive avarice. The Enemy did not choose that wise and goodly course, alas. But with Tulkatho’s overwhelming strength, none saw a way in which the Enemy could hope to assault the peace of Arda, and in this false confidence, unaware of treachery’s threat, the Powers celebrated their victory on the verdant island in the center of the world where the light of the two great fires met and mingled. Wearied by his long labours, Aulë the shaper and tamer of the stones of the earth rested upon a bed of soft grass that his spouse, she that created all living things, grew for him. As he rested, so did the mighty warrior Tulkatho, who had lent his strength to all the Powers without reservation. As the warrior rested and received the congratulations of others, the sister of Oromë proclaimed her love for he with golden hair and a laughing spirit. As this, the weary warrior sprung from the grass with a glad shout brighter than any he had in battle and proclaimed his equal admiration of the lithe-limbed and deer-swift sister of Oromë. Nessa she was, the Dancer, the Bride, and Oromë smiled to describe her. It was decided to have a wedding to celebrate their love and choice to espouse another, and so many of the Ainur, from the fourteen great Valar to their least servants, attended. Only in hindsight did the absence of many servants who should have attended or the swift departure of those like Mairon, the highest of Aulë’s attendants, once the initial vows were made and the dancing begun, reveal that Mailikô’s departure from the confines of Arda had been only temporary. [8]

The concept of a wedding, to make a large celebration involving the entire community out of the decision between two people, was unknown to the Kwendî. The union of two tribe members would affect the tribe as a whole through the changes in the social network, this was true, yet it was not occasion to hold a tribal event on par with the raising of a new communal building. The true motive of this particular wedding, as the listeners could readily perceive, was to have an excuse for joy after a long and terrible period of conflict. For what could be more contrary to such a violent division between those that should have been complementary in thought and efforts than the celebration of a new union?

Oromë listed unfamiliar names and described fantastic forms of the gathered Powers: of the lord of clouds with wrens and warblers nesting in his hair and on his shoulders, his lofty lady wife who made the stars and whose eyes were as bright as her creations, the spouses who fashioned the earth and then filled it with the living growing things, of Oromë’s wife with pale yellow and pink flowers floating from her feet to coat her hands as she braided the bride’s hair, and himself, the nervous older brother. Of the three siblings whose duties were not the material world but those of spirit Oromë noted as having been in attendance: a sister who wept for all and thus encompassed both grief and wisdom, her brother who resided over judgement and would have in his custody the spirits of those departed, and the youngest of the three who dealt with dreams and unlike his elder siblings was actually pleasant to share company. More Powers he described, attending the wedding with their host of servants and followers, of the lady of repose and healing with her soft pale robes and hands as light as lake mist and the lady who recorded all that had come to pass, each who had as spouse one of the lords of spirit, of the lord of waters standing uncomfortable in the gathered crowd but smiling as the butterflies that followed Banâ sipped at the water that dripped off his scales, and last of all the bridegroom and bride. Oromë described the procession on the soft grass as bride and groom approached each other to the resounding cheers and songs of the gathered, of the lord of clouds standing in witness for Ilúvatar as Tulkatho and Nessa spoke vows to another. The bright purple eyes of his sister had glowed with joy to announce the golden warrior as her husband, and she only released her grip on his hands as to make a dance of celebration at the completion of their vows.

Oromë grew silent as he conceded that in even the language of the Valar there were no words adequate to describe the Dance of Nessa.

No celebration would last unended, and it was as the newlyweds slept, and all the attending guests in likewise slumber and stupor, that the betrayal came. Servants of the Powers who had switched their allegiance in secret to Mailikô hastened to the north and south to destroy the pillars that upheld the lanterns of Aulë. While Tulkatho snored and Oromë admitted he too had been lost in hazy remembrance of his own first union with his lovely spouse, and none of their loyal warriors were stationed with alert eyes facing outside the island where the wedding had been held, no one noticed these traitors approach. Former servants of the Star-kindler cloaked themselves in shadows and the blue wolf that once hunted beside Oromë stilled any warning cry. Ossai, rebellious servant of Ulumô, generated terrible storms to pound at the great stone pillars with lashing winds and drown the light with onslaughts of water, yet it was the chief servant of Aulë who caused the most harm. Once a figure most admired, chief of those admirers being himself, this Abhorred One knew the fissures and stress points in the pillars that held the world’s illumination, and it was his hands that showed Mailikô and his terrible followers where to strike. With blows to the wide base of each stone pillar, cracks that reached through the centers to spider out on the far side, the grinding of loose and liquified rock, down the columns fell with a roar greater than any peal of thunder. Long shadows fell over the earth before the twin lights guttered out, and in darkness the broken pillars smashed into the earth. Continents broke. The two fallen lamps pushed out the very oceans, causing tidal waves and earthquakes as the once perfect symmetry of the world was irrevocably shattered. The Powers awoke to darkness and the despoilment of the world they had long laboured to create. Fires raged where the land had once been green. In shock did they behold the seabeds emptied and dry, trees uprooted, gentle hills flattened, and over everything immense clouds of dust. Of the multitude of species of both plant and animal Aulë’s spouse had devised, only a handful survived this cataclysm. 

Oromë bowed his head. “If my sister’s dance is the expression of joy indescribable, then the song of grief from Nienna was the expression of sorrow no words of mine can recount. Not even the poetry of my king can match the articulation of feeling.”

War resumed, and the Powers retreated to the far west. At the edge of the world there was a large landmass that had survived mostly intact from the cataclysmic collapse of the two pillars, and it was here that the Valar gathered examples of all of the surviving lifeforms. Then they rose a great palisade of mountains, the highest to ever be. Behind the wall of these mountains the Powers built their houses and tended their crafts, creating ever newer and more beautiful things. “And in the center is our city, our home village, and there is a green mound blessed by my spouse’s elder sister, where she has poured all her thought and song of the green things that grow from the earth that is her domain. The Weeper watered this green mound with her cool tears, and from this mound grew two trees. As they grew their flowers emitted a dew that gave forth a light more pure and bright than the lamps that had been destroyed.” The Great Hunter paused and pulled two items from his brown tunic, the leather of the fabric briefly shifting to the texture of bark before parting before his fingers. The effect was deeply unsettling, and Oromë winced in apology. A small pouch grew from his belt like a budding fruit until it transformed, hanging off the braided cord around his waist like an exact match for the bag tied to Nöwë’s belt. Oromë unfurled his fingers. “Here are two leaves from the Trees.” He used his other hand to pull them apart and unfold the leaves until they draped across his lap. “This one, narrow and dark with the silver underside, belongs to the elder. The one underneath, pale green like a beech, is a leaf off the younger.” The leaves were larger than any the elves had seen before and shimmered in the firelight. “The light from the elder tree’s flowers is silver and cool, whereas the younger is a fierce golden brightness. They alternate their lights as to not overwhelm, and thus our time is divided into days organized by this cycle of light.”

Oromë encouraged the audience to reach out and feel the texture of the leaves. They had an aroma that was faint but pleasant, and completely foreign. Once curiosity was satisfied, Oromë methodically refolded the leaves into small intricate star-like shapes and tucked them into his newly-formed belt-pouch.

“The Star-kindler collects the dew of their flowers to make many lights to illuminate all corners of our homeland, vats and jars and small glass vials full of silver and golden light, and has used them to create the brighter stars you see in the sky. I did not bring any of these lamps with me, but I find it a comfort to bring a piece of the Trees with me wherever I travel.”

Such familiar behavior, to carry a physical piece of home while on long journeys away, comforted the listeners and reduced the alienness of Oromë. Then the Vala stood, towering over the elves, and spoke several sharp words in his native language, the syllables stinging their ears. Nahar pulled away from one of the huts where the giant horse had been nibbling at the thatched roof. Ears pinned back in a strange expression of guilt, the horse snorted and bowed its head, then trotted off to the shoreline to sulk and splash his hocks in the lake water. Oromë’s language shifted back to that of the Kwendî, his sounds no longer piercing and painful. “We are guests, Næchærra, and there are plenty other plants for you to eat that shall not inconvenience the Children.” The stallion turned to face away from Oromë, tail swishing back and forth, and waded deeper into the lake, kicking and splashing with his front legs. “Cover yourself in mud if you wish, but know we must leave soon to visit the other villages as we have promised.” 

“Shall you leave soon?” Nôwê asked.

Oromë turned to look at the three who had discovered him. “I have promised to travel with them to the village of your leader, the first chieftain who is senior above all other villages. It would be improper of me otherwise. I cannot making binding promises on behalf of my king, but I can convey messages. To the three chieftains in order, as I have been made to understand, shall I visit, and to as many of the other groups as Kwendê and his friends can guide me. As it is my duty to hunt the creatures of Mailikô, it is the first village of the hunters that shall point me in the proper direction.” The Great Hunter smiled. “I look forward to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [7] As noted in the _Cuivienyarna_ and "Quendi and Eldar" under the section about the Clan Names. - _Author's note: as those numbers are far too small to generate a sustainable population, I leave it ambiguous if the first generation of the Minyar stayed at fourteen. Anyways, one of the lynch-pins of this story is the supposition of at least one fully matured second generation at Cuiviénen by the time Oromë finds the elves._  
>  [8] [same Linkwînen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1282357/chapters/2655145)  
> [9] Much of this chapter rewords information from the first five and half pages of the chapter from _The Silmarillion_ of which shares its name.
> 
> Side stories and supplementary materials can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5144357/chapters/11841371). The two-part ["Making Friends"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5144357/chapters/16299008) functions as an unofficial chapter from the point-of-view of Elwë and is best read before or after Chapter 3 despite chronologically occurring during Chapter 2 of "Of Ingwë Ingweron". [Erikwa](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5144357/chapters/11841395) sets up for the next chapter.


	6. Of the Naming of Indis

Though the introduction of the people of Elwë’s village to one of the creators of their universe had happened with success and ease, the three young elves were not such foolish optimists to assume an equal ease in all other introductions, especially when they were not leaders or holders of high regard and respect among the other Kwendî. Elwë was the firstborn son of the now-lost leaders of his village, but for him to inhabit the position they had held was still something newborn and thus as weak. Enel and Enelyë knew him not and had not gifted him their approval. Finwë was admired for his craftsmanship in his own village, but it was Rumilo who led and made decisions - and even he bowed to the will of Tata and Tatië. And all bowed their will to the First among Chieftains, Imin. A great problem faced the three that led Oromë and Nahar to the Minyar village.

This problem was not what the man that would become Ingwë Ingweron thought of as he returned to the Minyar village. Plotting how to successfully introduce the Vala Oromë to his chieftain and tribespeople should have encompassed all his mental efforts. His mind should have been formulating what words to say, the correct level of deference and obstinate conviction to show in both tone and action to his chieftain. He needed both to garner respect for his words and by association to the Valar he had found. To ensure that the Hunter Oromë swiftly gained the full acceptance from that village that the man who would become Ingwë Ingweron had never accrued, this should have been his concern. To overcome the uncertainties that would be raised merely because he was the one to find Oromë, this was the disadvantage the man that would be Ingwë faced. That he had disobeyed his chieftain to leave his village when ordered not to, and that such a betrayal of trust disrupted the fabric of his tribe as gravely as had he disobeyed an order while hunting, the gravest of crimes because a hunter that could not be trusted to follow orders meant empty bellies for everyone, should have been his worry. The man that would become Ingwë existed under censure from his tribe for his sullen and solitary ways and could ill afford more. These were not his thoughts.

His thoughts were for his newborn sister - and the name he wished to bestow upon her.

He that even now knew he should be Ingwë knew his sister should have the name Indis.

Indis, for Nessa, for the Bride, the sister of the mighty Hunter, and thus he wished to claim for her a name of one of the Powers that created and held stewardship of the very universe itself. There was an arrogance in naming her this, in proclaiming that she would be as swift as the deer, as graceful a dancer as to be beyond words to describe, and that her chosen love and equal could only be a warrior unconquerable. Yet the alternative, more conventional reading of the name he gave his newborn sister was, while less cosmic in its ambitions, no less confrontational and bold. Indis, First among Young Women, was an usurpation of Iminyë and especially Iminyë’s daughter, Ravennë.

The second child of Imin and Iminyë must be here described, their daughter Ravennë. A boast it was to name their child the lioness, in honor of the great hunting cats that instructed by example the Minyar how to hunt and who shared with the first tribe a similar tawny golden pelt. It was a proud name for a proud young woman. ‘Most beautiful’ the daughter of Imin and Iminyë was lauded, the princess of the Beautiful Ones, but this was falsehood. All Kwendî were comely, and the golden hair of the first tribe was esteemed as highest beauty by others outside the tribe, but objectively Ravennë did not outshine her peers in appearance. For one, she was short among a people that prized height, and her mouth considered ill-shaped for her face. She inherited her father’s jawline that made Imin handsome but his daughter not. Her eyes were the bluish purple common to the Minyar, whereas had she inherited the golden brown of her father, the striking similarity to her namesake would have elevated her to the acclaim so liberally bestowed. Her brother was handsome, insufferably so. None regularly praised him for his looks. But Ravennë embraced the flattery of her beauty and made falsehood reality. She cared herself as the most beautiful daughter yet born to the elves, and could not fathom a rival to this claim.

In the darkest roots of his heart, where the veins drank bitter resentment to survive his shattered childhood hopes, spite towards Ravennë fueled this decision of the man who wished to proclaim himself Ingwë. Ravennë, proud and beautiful and beloved by the village, possessed everything he desired for himself and his family.

More so than Imin’s son, the bumptious prince, Ravennë was his target.

* * *

The journey by foot from the small Nelyar village to the singular large village of the first tribe was not arduous or long - though despite the wetter terrain, the distance between Elwë and Finwë’s villages was shorter. On a rise of land away from the direct shoreline of Cuiviénen, the Minyar village with its ever-present fires was easy to spot only a few minutes after the lights of the other village had faded. Like a lodestone it directed their path, the shapes of its fence and buildings slowly growing more distinct in the ever-night. Soon their feet found the well-worn path.

The man that privately thought of himself as Ingwë began to lengthen his stride as to separate himself from his companions as scouts did on the long hunts.

Finwë began to play with the dyed fringe of his shawl, a nervous tick, and turned to remark to Oromë. “We let Kwendê take the lead here. This is his village.” Finwë had often visited his friend, Elwë, to attend village celebrations like roof raisings and the addition of new children, but he had never stepped a foot inside of the Minyar village. Elwë, as heir of a governing couple of one of the numerous small groups that had branched out of the main following of Enel, had spoken formally to the chieftain of all the elves, and the prospect of meeting Imin was not an idea completely foreign to him. This was not to say Elwë felt no nervousness, only when compared to his good friend.

Oromë gave a solemn nod.

Nahar pushed against the elf’s back in a gesture meant to be reassuring, yet the force of the nuzzle unbalanced Finwë.

Elwë had fallen back to fill his waterskin in one of the streams that flowed outside the Minyar village, for the large stream that fed his village still held the tainted taste, and he wished to limit how often he drew from their stores of good drinking water. He said nothing as his friend stumbled or his other friend jogged towards the village gate.

That such an arrangement among the three friends of who ran eagerly forth and who fell back should be later repeated, to profound historic effect, should be no surprise.

The two elves, Ainur, and horse-shaped Maiar waited as Ingwë returned to his home village. From their positions behind him, none could see the tightness to his normally stoic face or the worry hiding in the tension of the skin around his eyes. The Lord of the Forest sensed it, and restrained from making a fond sound.

 

Asmalô, seventh-born of the Minyar and one of their more promising young hunters before the depredations of the Dark Hunters curtailed the long hunts, rose from where he crouched on a hillock outside the thorn-lined and torch-brightened palisade that delineated the confines of the Minyar village, his lanky body nimbused by the village fires. His movements were jerky, though his distance from the village’s safety was not great enough to explain his fear. Even in this eclipsing angle, the whites of his widened eyes were clear. “Ûkwendô!” he called out to the other member of the first tribe. “Please be you! Imin knows you are not in the village, that you disobeyed his command!” The former childhood friend of the man that would be Ingwë spoke with concern when Ingwë expected only angry censure. “You give no heed to anyone in the tribe, and I fear tolerance of your defiant ways has ended. You can no longer go alone as you wish,” the young hunter began to scold, then dropped his lecture as he beheld the companions of the one he thought of as a loner. “Who do you bring with you? ...Lo, Ûkwendô, what have you brought to bear upon your people?”

“Peace, Asmalô. Elwê of the Nelyar and Phinwê of the Ñgolodor are known to us, and the ones with us mean the Speakers no harm.”

“ _Who_ are with you?” Asmalô stammered, staring at tall Oromë and Nahar gleaming silver in the starlight.

“Not the Dark Hunters that so scare you and our mighty leaders,” the man who would be Ingwë Ingweron said in a false mild voice, the undercurrent of mockery rising to color his speech. Asmalô caught it, and his thoughts warred if to openly rebuke the slightly younger man for the confrontational audacity.

Finwë began to run towards the two Minyar to forestall further conflict, but Oromë pulled him back with a hand on the young man’s shoulder as he stepped forward instead. Seeded within the action was a gradual increase of the Vala’s size and the incorporation of an uncanny luminosity to his skin, until the Power stood half again in height taller than the elf beside him and glowed with a holy faint blue light. The texture of bark and dappled fur had returned to his skin, and a sweet scent of crushed pine needles waffled strongly from his form. Such action naturally pulled the attention away from the elf who had transgressed against Imin’s decree and displayed towards it a blatant disregard. Had Asmalô held his weapons in his hand, he would have dropped them.

“Greetings, young one,” Oromë called out in a voice that boomed like his hunting horn, the Valaróma. “Your concern for your friend and people do you credit. And forgive me my amusement, for it is not so that your mother named for the yellow songbird[9] beloved by both my wife and king? I had not known that the Fruit-giver had allowed various seed-eaters to awaken on the far shore, aside from those like the pine buntings.”

In later recountings of the meeting of Oromë and the Vanyar, that the first topic consisted of the habitat range of small birds was allocated to a footnote.

 

The population of the Minyar far exceeded that of Elwë’s village, and all that were of age were gifted in mind-sight as to feel the true nature of the spirit of Oromë as he that would be Ingwë had in that forest glade. Thus the meeting between the Vala and the first tribe of elves need not be imagined as greatly differing from the first assembly, aside from a few particulars. It was tall Imin, crowned with a pair of feathers and draped in beautiful striped and spotted furs, and Iminyë in a gown made of hundreds of rattling bone beads and a thick cloak of a white auroch hide who greeted Oromë, while his tribe stood behind in amazement but not fear, and the Vala bowed to them and spoke in a tone less informal than before to humor the first-awaken Children of Iluvatar.

Oromë swiftly recounted the identities of the Valar, their origins and their appointed task in Arda, their maliciously recalcitrant member and his war against their rightful authority, his search for the elves -and his wayward servant, and the sudden encounter, as well as his intentions to aid the Kwendî by clearing the hunting grounds of the evil shadows that abducted the elves. The sheer magnitude of new information to confront would have daunted anyone, yet the Unbegotten had awoken once to an entire world with which they needed to fill their blank minds, and even this shock was not as great. Imin and his wife had the comfort, when they gaze upward, that the stars still shone down. A disservice it would be to their characters to say they were hidebound and unwilling to accept the cataclysm to the society and world they had outlined and commanded. One should not judge too harshly those that would lead the Refusers.

Oromë and his horse were welcomed into the village, led to the clearing in the center of the village between the circle where disputes were settled and warriors trained and the grand hut of the chieftains family. Here Imin and Iminyë pulled out a pair of stools to sit and listen, as everyone gathered around them. Finwë and Elwë were included in the invitation, but fundamentally ignored. Elwë made a token effort to shoulder all responsibility, as it was his need to avenge his parents that had drawn his friends Finwë and Kwendë from their villages, and Finwë was eager to praise his friend's virtues to a disbelieving audience. The Minyar response was quiet but profound befuddlement. 

In the excitement and upheaval of Oromë’s arrival and the revelations about their entire universe, the transgression of venturing far from the village in secret seemed forgiven. This was a false assumption, but the meeting of ones’ deities took priority.

Ingwë stood before Imin as a young buck would face an elder male with a herd, muscles coiled tense and eyes staring straight on without subservience. His spear he had handled off to Asmalô, and his face was bare of paint or markings. The expression of his face was not one of challenge or anger, though its impassiveness was barely less confrontational. His thoughts, as always in the village, he guarded from others to sense. This stoicism dismayed Finwë and Elwë, who knew of the joy and excitement their friend had felt with the discovery of the Valar, and were leaning their hopes on that confident delight to convince the Minyar of Oromë’s goodness, as it had for themselves and Elwë’s people. “I returned with bounty, and the stars shined upon my hunt,” he said to his chieftain, the ceremonial words of hunters when entering the village with success. The Minyar tittered at the incongruity of likening all this to bringing back some felled deer, and even Imin smirked. No other hunt could have a greater prize. Imin and Iminyë’s son, vain Inkundû, disliked the sensation of feeling envy towards the village pariah. His sister, Ravennë, appraised the son of feared and pitied Skarnâ-Maktê with fresh eyes and shrewd calculation.

Oromë excused himself from the undercurrents of these interpersonal interactions, though his interest in observing them was strong. His opinions and observations he would hold private until he returned to the Mánahaxar.

Of particular interest to him were the small children, from the half-grown teens lean with hunger to the toddlers and infants clutched tight to their mothers and fathers.

Maktâmê held her infant daughter in her good arm, openly weeping to see her son returned hale and in high spirits. He did not run to her, but his pace to reach her side was decidedly quick, and it was a firm voice that bade her listen to the name he had chosen for his newborn sister. Bitter resentment of her tribe and those that lead it encouraged Maktâmê to eagerly embrace her son’s suggestion, even if she had not yet heard the full story of Nessa and knowing full well the conflict this would bring with Iminyë.

When Maktâmê’s son returned his attention to the discussion between Oromë and his tribe members, the topic was the proposed hunt.

Kanatië, whose spouse was the first taken by the Dark Hunters, spoke. “Are you truly so mighty, Great Arâmê, as to scare off those horrible things that stalk us?”

To this Oromë replied by hefting aloft his great horn and bringing it to his lips, then blowing a single pure and roaring note that rang across the shoreline and deep into the surrounding forest. “Those that I hate, hear that sound and fear me. Those that I hunt, hear that sound and flee from me,” Oromë proclaimed. His voice was low and deep, especially in contrast to the aural lightning strike of the Valaróma’s call.

“Then we shall hunt, all who are most able,” Iminyë said. “Our food is near depleted, and we wish to see you and the skill and prowess you promised. Then my husband shall take you to meet with Tata and Enel.”

The implication that he and his friends would stay behind was not lost on the man than would be Ingwë, and he shoved aside Inkundû to stand before his leader once more, ignoring the sputtering anger of the prince.

“Do you care to speak now, Kwendê?” Imin asked, a lilting note on the name that outsiders used to call a member of his tribe. The rebuke was unsaid but hammered like a waterfall, fueled by hurt feelings and confusion, for the man that would be Ingwë had kept himself aloof from his people.

“Now that I have worth to share,” Ingwë eventually snapped out, a curt gesture in the direction of the Vala, "I shall speak."

Oromë interjected, “The three shall come with us. It is right, as they were first to find me. Though if I am to meet with all the Children, if you are spread out along this giant saline lake, it might be prudent of me to teach you how to ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [9] yellowhammer, a bright yellow bird closely related to the pine bunting


End file.
